Musical musings from the dark corner of a pub

Cool Ghouls

The spectre of death loomed large over several of the year’s best albums, namely David Bowie’s Blackstar and Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker – both artists died in 2016, shortly after releasing their records – and Nick Cave’s Skeleton Tree, which, in places, dealt with the grief and sadness he felt following the death of his teenage son, Arthur, in 2015.

All three albums were masterpieces and highlights in their creators’ impressive back catalogues, but were difficult to listen to.

I defy anyone not to shed a tear while hearing Bowie croon “If I never see the English evergreens I’m running to, it’s nothing to me”, or Laughing Len intone, “I’m leaving the table – I’m out of the game.”

When Danish soprano Else Torp duets with Cave on Distant Sky, her beautiful vocals could break even the hardest of hearts.

On a personal note, I had a difficult 2016, having to cope with illness, anxiety and family bereavements, so these three albums often suited my mood, but, strangely, I haven’t chosen any of them as my favourite record of the year.

I so nearly opted for another dark album as my top choice – Richmond Fontaine’s brilliant You Can’t Go Back If There’s Nothing To Go Back To – the final long-player from Willy Vlautin’s Portland-based, alt-country band who’ve now split up – but I didn’t.

Instead, I went for a record that always made me smile and cheered me up whenever I listened to it, thanks to its wonderful arrangements, sublime melodies and unashamedly retro vibe.

My favourite album of 2016 is Over The Silvery Lake – the debut record from London’s The Hanging Stars.

Released in March, Over The Silvery Lake was recorded in LA, Nashville and Walthamstow. It’s a gorgeous psych-folk-pop-country-rock record that owes a debt to The Byrds and the Cosmic American Music of Gram Parsons, but also Fairport Convention’s pastoral ’60s English tune-smithery.

It’s laced with pedal steel guitar and shot through with blissed-out harmonies. There are songs where willows weep and ships set sail on the sea, hazy, lazy, shimmering summer sounds (I’m No Good Without You and Crippled Shining Blues), as well as brooding desert-rock (The House On The Hill], trippy mystical adventures (Golden Vanity) and, on the closing track, the beautiful Running Waters Wide, rippling piano is accompanied by bursts of groovy flute.

The Hanging Stars

Earlier this year, I interviewed The Hanging Stars about the writing and recording of the album – you can read the article here.

The band have just finished making the follow-up and it will be released next year. I’ve already reserved a place for it in my Best Albums of 2017 list…

Here’s a list of my favourite 35 albums from this year and a Spotify playlist to accompany it, where possible – some of the albums aren’t available to stream.

This year, I interviewed several of the artists featured, so I’ve linked to the articles below. Happy Christmas – all the best for 2017 and I’ll see you on the other side…

This year’s Say It With Garage Flowers number one album can be easily filed alongside Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks, Nick Cave’s The Boatman’s Call and Ryan Adams’ Heartbreaker as one of the greatest breakup records of all time.

Broken Heart Surgery by singer-songwriter Pete Fijalkowski (Adorable and Polak) and guitarist Terry Bickers (The House of Love and Levitation) is intimate and stripped-down, with nods to Johnny Cash, Spiritualized, John Barry and The Velvet Underground.A raw, deeply personal, melancholy album, it documents the breakup of a relationship and the aftermath, but is shot through with plenty of gallows humour and deadpan wit.

On the record, there are several lyrical references to material possessions – leaving them behind, or being saddled with someone’s else’s old stuff. There’s a lot of emotional baggage involved, but also a lot of physical baggage, too…There are some brilliant lyrics on the album – some of which made me laugh out loud when I first heard them. For example, “Hope – it’s more addictive than coke. Yeah – it’s cupid’s cruel joke…” (Betty Ford) and “[she] just left me with cutlery and a whole pile of her duff CDs…” (Queen of Stuff).

When I spoke to Pete earlier this year, he told me: “I wanted the album to reflect the various aspects of a breakup, so while some of the subject matters are taking place more in the head, there are others that have a very physical location and an obsession with small details – the division of objects between a couple (Breaking Up), the forgotten objects left behind in a now half-empty flat (Queen of Stuff) or the changing soundtrack to a couple’s life as their relationship deteriorates – from furtive whispers and kisses, to slamming doors and uneasy silences (Sound of Love).”

Asked what he wanted to achieve with the album, Pete said: “First and foremost, I wanted to make an album that I was proud of.”

Rest assured, he can hold his head up high – it’s a stone cold classic.

While we’re on the subject of masters in melancholy, Morrissey made a welcome return this year with World Peace Is None Of Your Business – his first album in five years. His best long-player since 1994’s Vauxhall & I, it was a glorious comeback record, with epic ballads (I’m Not A Man, Mountjoy), unabashed pop songs (Staircase At The University, Kiss Me A Lot, The Bullfighter Dies ) and lavish, exotic arrangements, including mariachi brass, strings and flamenco guitar.

Alas, due to a dispute with his record label, Harvest, the album is currently not available on Spotify or iTunes, so, instead, here’s a YouTube clip of the mighty Staircase At The University…

Other notable 2014 albums included Fair Warning by folk-rockers The Rails; Charade – the debut album from LA-based country singer Meg Olsen; A Swirling Fire Burning Through The Rye by San Fran garage-psychers Cool Ghouls ; Phantom Radio by the Mark Lanegan Band, which explored dark, electronic territory; The Breaks by former Boo Radley Martin Carr – gorgeous, lush guitar pop – and Alexandria by alt. country artist Chris Mills, which was his first album in five years and saw him team up with a new backing band – The Distant Stars.

Everything But The Girl’s Ben Watt impressed with his solo album Hendra, which featured former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler on a poignant set of songs that, at times, recalled the legendary John Martyn, while Cherry Ghost’s latest record, Herd Runners, was a soundtrack for the lost and lonely, similar to Richard Hawley’s late night laments…

Chris Mills

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention News From Nowhere – the ‘long-lost’ debut by ’90s Britpop band Speedy. Recorded in 1997, the album finally saw the light of day earlier this year and was well worth the wait. The band even reformed and played live for the occasion.

I played a small part in getting the album released – a 2009 blog I wrote about the record attracted some interest and one thing led to another…

Here’s a list of my favourite 30 albums of 2014 and a Spotify playlist to go with it.

San Francisco’s Cool Ghouls are named after a phrase used on stage by Funkadelic’s George Clinton, when he walked out of a big mother ship and addressed the crowd: “Hey, all you cool ghouls.”

And if that’s not, er, cool enough for you, their latest album, A Swirling Fire Burning Through The Rye, is a great garage-psyche-surf-rock record that is steeped in ‘60s sounds, high on harmonies and full of fuzzed-up guitar and jangling riffs. Think Nuggets meets The Beachboys, The Byrds and The Beatles, with a nod to The Velvet Underground.

I spoke to bassist Pat Thomas about the San Francisco scene, classic ‘60s music, what Cool Ghouls got up to for Halloween this year and their plans for 2015…

Your new record is one of my favourite albums of 2014. Can you tell me about the writing and the recording process behind it?

Pat Thomas: Thanks. We recorded it with Sonny Smith [Sonny & The Sunsets] at his house in San Rafael, north of San Francisco. We tracked all the guitars and drums live. We wrote all the songs over the course of about a year. We’d been playing a few of the songs live at shows for a long time before going in to record them.

The title of the album is from a lyric in the song Reelin‘, which was written by Pat McDonald [guitarist]. It’s an image of destruction – an unstoppable, devastating force. He’s thinking about San Francisco and some of the cultural changes that have been happening there recently.

Your sound is steeped in ‘60s garage rock, freakbeat and psyche. Some of your songs, such as And It Grows and The Mile, sound like long-lost ‘60s tracks. Did you all grow up listening to ‘60s back catalogues?

PT: Kind of. Pat McDonald grew up with a Bay Area oldies station called KFRC constantly playing in his family’s garage. [Drummer] Alex’s dad weaned him on Dylan and Springsteen. My parents listened to more ‘80s stuff.

Why are you attracted to ‘60s sounds?

PT: When I was first learning guitar, I was drawn towards classic rock. Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones resonated with me more than the popular contemporary rock music at that time, like Blink 182, Green Day etc. So I spent high school digging into older shit from the ‘60s and ‘70s and old folk and blues. It was easy to get into music from any time, as it was around 2003 and there were sites like Napster and Limewire. Classic rock was a popular radio format.

With the end of the 20th century, I think there was a general ‘Best of the 20th century’ recap that led to a lot of greatest hits collections being released on CD. But I think my attention was pointed specifically towards garage and psyche by a group of bands who were popularising that sound here in San Francisco, starting around 2007 – bands like Thee Oh Sees, Fresh & Onlys, Sic Alps and The Mantles. There were bands outside of San Francisco, too – The Black Lips, Strange Boys, King Khan & BBQ Show… Garage was the hot new shit. This was right as we were starting college.

We definitely take some cues from ‘60s bands – The Great Society, The Byrds, The Creation, The Grateful Dead – those guys were some of the best to ever play psychedelia. But we’re primarily engaging with a musical conversation that’s currently taking place on the West Coast.

What’s it like being in a band in San Francisco at the moment? Is there a scene? Where do you guys fit in?

PT: It’s a good place to have a band. A pretty big chunk of the scene packed up and left for LA last year, so it’s kind of all over the place right now. But there’s definitely still a ton of music going on… You gotta ask someone else from San Francisco if we’re hip!

PT: Our main influences are probably the people and artists immediately around us – our friends, people we see around town and bands we play with at shows. I think these people are the people we’re thinking about when we make music.

Can you tell me some of your favourite albums?

PT:Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys, Person Pitch by Panda Bear, A Love Supreme by John Coltrane, Marquee Moon by Television, Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers’s self-titled album, Moondance by Van Morrison, Putrifiers II by Thee Oh Sees, Europe ’72 by The Grateful Dead…. There are so many more.

How are you feeling as we head into 2015 and what are your plans for next year?

PT: I feel young, but also like I’m getting older… We’re gonna do a national US tour in March. Between now and then we’re gonna keep it on the West Coast and write and record an LP. We hope to release a couple of 7 inches that we’ve been working on.

Can we expect any UK live dates soon?

PT: We want to get over there next year. There’s nothing in the works yet, though.

Finally, what did CoolGhouls do for Halloween this year?

PT: We dressed up in lipstick, sequins and gowns and did a covers set of Supremes songs!